Mufin makes music recommendations scientific

Users of digital music services, whether they be paid-for or free, are probably used to music recommendations. Currently these rely on other users making recommendations and works based on similar tracks.

A new service called Mufin, which is currently in closed beta, is taking a more scientific approach to music recommendations, however. Rather than relying on other users to figure out the music you might like, it instead analyzes the music you actually listen to. Every piece of music has its density, tempo, and rhythm logged and then this information is compared to other available tracks. The result is music recommendations that match the type of sound that you are already listening to.

The advantage to such a system is you are likely to get a wider range of music suggestions that cross many different genre. The comparisons can be done across an album of songs, as well as just a single track, making it more likely that album recommendations will have several songs you really like if a strong match is found. You also don’t need to wait for the recommendations to start coming in. Tell Mufin what music you listen to and it can present recommendations straight away that are a good match.

The one downside to the service currently is the time it takes to analyze a new album of tracks. Due to the processing required it can take up to 3 days before the results are uploaded to the service’s database. This means new music could take a while to appear, but Mufin already has 3.8 million tracks available.

Matthew’s Opinion
It is a service in closed beta, so you can’t currently sign-up without an invitation, but it is certainly a service to join just to see how its recommendations differ when it does finally come online. You may be surprised what music you find you like in a totally different genre.

I think that’s going to be the main draw of Mufin – the ability to get recommendations not from people who like the same music, but from a system that knows the type of sound you like. If it works well and catches on, then you could also see other music services either licensing their system or trying to create their own.

The processing required is a disadvantage, but as the CNET article suggests, why not let the users handle it on their machines? If they have a new album, let them download a piece of Mufin software that carries out the analysis on their machine, much like the Folding@Home project does.

Speak Your Mind

Sal Cangeloso

hm, pretty cool. i got excited about a scientific muffin though, so it’s a bit of a let down.

Derek

This sounds remarkably like Pandora.

http://www.shizzlin.com/ Lulu

Muffin & Pandora are great but not for everybody.
1. They can’t be used outside the US.
2. It’s much nicer to explore with music-videos (that’s why so many use youtube as a music recommendation engine)
3. They either offer music recommendations or webradio, but not both, although these features are closely related.